Chapter 43 Angel
Angel
My mother flows across the ground beside me, her pale silver coat gleams, but she’s one of the most dangerous hunters I’ve ever met. She trained Hazard and I well. But I never thought we’d be hunting together, not like this.
I lead the way, following the ghostly pull of the bonds. Casey is here; Riot is with her. Half of me wants to go to her, but the other half wants to bleed this pack dry.
We slip in through the pack grounds like shadows.
It’s like a small suburb except it’s clear it’s been run-down and neglected.
There are no gardens or painted houses. No, everything is falling apart and broken.
The same red dirt covers everything, and trash and broken things lie where they were left.
Ahead of us, I see people running. I’m tempted to chase them down, but instinct keeps me going.
There are lots of screams in a certain area, and a whole lot of wooden benches sat in a semicircle around a fence that is half buried.
No, not buried; there is a hole down there.
What is that? I zero in on it, frustrated and confused until I spot a beta holding a cattle prod. He leans down with bared teeth.
An inferno of rage hits me, and I explode.
I hear a grunt and slam into the beta, breaking ribs. I snap his arm in one bite, blood filling my mouth. He screams, and the prod falls into the hole. My mother steps past us and lets out an unhappy growl, her tail flicking mercilessly.
I rip the asshole apart. His dark red blood splatters the fence. I don’t stop until my rage is quenched, then I freeze, because I can smell lilac.
My whole body tingles.
She’s here. She’s here!
My mother noses around and finds a ladder, pushing it in. My eyes snap to the hole in the ground. Down there? Is she…
“Hey, who are you?”
Rage returns, and I whirl, springing before he can even ask another question. I rip out the throat of the idiot who dared to touch my pack.
I turn, and there she is, dirty, emaciated, but alive, her eyes gleaming.
I stand up, frozen. “Casey,” I finally breathe her name.
“Angel,” she whispers.
I rush to her, wrapping her in my arms. “Casey. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have known it was an accident. Omega, I knew you weren’t like them. I’m sorry.”
She leans into me, crying into my chest. “You’re okay; you look so beautiful. Like a dream.”
Riot joins our hugging pile and kisses her cheek. “I’m going to go help the others, but you’re going to stay with Angel and Mama, right?”
The silver wolf jerks and then wags her tail, but her eyes are fixed on us, and I know she likes what she sees. My mother and I were always close in a quiet, we-don’t-need-to-talk-about-it way.
Casey looks up at us with huge, haunted eyes. She dips her head, and Riot rushes off. I run my hand down her arm until I can thread my fingers around hers. The warmth has me closing my eyes.
She’s alive. We have her.
“I need to settle something,” Casey says in a dead voice.
She shifts into that feral omega wolf, and when she lops off, my mother and I follow on her heels. Anyone who comes into her path who is Foster, she kills with a savagery that is borderline insane.
I approve of it. I join the bloodletting, turning my fur red and pink.
I glance at my mother, and I can see the pride in her eyes, and I know she and Casey will be firm friends.
All around us are the screams of the hunted.
The Khaos pack is silent, effectively eliminating the Foster pack from existence.
The bonds tweak, and I feel the fury and joy of my twin.
I turn in his direction just as he jumps onto a roof and lets out a spooky howl that sends Fosters exploding out of the house he is perched on.
He jumps down and kills Preston in five vicious moves. Ankle, knee, gut, wrist, and throat. He’s dead before he hits the ground.
I’m not sorry; if anything, Hazard was too kind.
He stops, and his tail drops. He stands there, staring in our direction. I can feel the uncertainty, the hesitance in the bond. I wish I could tell her how hard he fought for her. How he never stopped.
Hazard whines. One low, lonely note that hits me hard in the chest.
She rushes past us and bounds into him. He jumps back, dancing around her, and she clumsily dances with him until, at last, he stops and rubs his face along the side of hers.
Fuck. I look away, giving them this private moment.
My mother steps past me, watching with wide eyes. She’s never seen this side of Hazard. The carefree part of him that is healing to those who need it. I know it looks irresponsible at times, but it’s not; it’s never been that way.
Hazard is the sunlight we all need to breathe.
He pulls back and licks the tip of her nose, making her sneeze. Her tail dusts the dirt.
I walk towards them, and she turns, pressing against me as Hazard stands over us, protecting and watching out.
A moment of peace in chaos, a perfect moment of purity in battle.
She is my salvation.
“You!”
She wrenches her head up and away from me. Her father charges us, his eyes bulge, his anger and fear pouring off him, turning the air sour. He shifts into a deep charcoal wolf with a white mask.
She lets out a growl, but a silver bullet hits him.
I charge in, helping my mother. We rip at him, tearing him apart.
We make it slow.
We make him suffer.
She stands witness, Hazard beside her.
“Liam said you were an omega wolf, but he thought he gave you enough wolfsbane that you’d never shift,” her father says as he lies in a pool of his own blood.
The devastating blow hits her; I feel it.
She shifts, staggering, but Hazard catches her in his arms, his expression one of pure loathing as he looks at the wolf who should have protected this omega with everything in him.
“Wait! Liam did this to me?” Her voice is rusty and haunting.
“Liam has been your undoing since day one, my daughter. All the way along, he told me to kill you, but I couldn’t do it. You look very much like your mother. Should have killed you…”
Her eyes are glassy with tears. “Angel?”
I look to my mother. She darts in and tears out his throat, and the alpha of Foster Pack, the monster who tortured my mate, dies in the dirt, as he should.
I lift my head and howl.
It’s answered by the pack.
But there’s one voice I don’t hear.
Wrath is silent.